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Monday, January 9, 2017

Go Amuse Yourself

Do kids ever say they are bored these days?
I'm not sure. Even young children seem to be online all the
time, gaming, texting and whatever else. However, I imagine that
most readers of this blog will remember the days when kids
would say "I'm bored". And you all know what the answer from our
parents was..."go find something to amuse yourself with".

For me, that usually meant reading or drawing.
I did have three siblings, but they were much older than me. And
I did have school friends, but they lived a fair distance from
me and I wasn't able to get out and play with them as often as I
would have liked. We lived on a busy street and although we all
walked everywhere back then, most parents didn't want their kids
walking by themselves to my home on one of the busiest streets
in the city.

The end result of all of this was that I
became quite able to amuse myself with hobbies and imagination.
I'm not sure whether I started out as an introvert, but I sure
ended up that way.

Something interesting that I've noticed is
that some of the same challenges apply as we age. We often have
to find something to fill our time. I was a little shocked
recently when it occurred to me that I have been retired for
nine years now. Part of me wonders, where did the years go? And
part of me is pleasantly surprised by the fact that I have been
quite happily amusing myself for almost a decade.

I wasn't unhappy when I became an empty
nester. And I certainly wasn't unhappy to sell my business and
retire nine years ago. There are so many things to do! And never
enough time to do them.

However, that is not to say that every day is
a day of excitement and adventure.

Some days I have to follow that old advice and
find something to amuse myself with. One of the good things
about being a photographer is that I have lots and lots of raw
material to play with. Even bad photographs can turn into
something interesting with a little bit of imagination and a tad
of luck.

I am an anomaly in this age of selfie taking,
but was tasked to take one for a photography challenge our club
was assigned last summer. I had a vision in mind that I wanted
to create, and took a trip to my local Frenchy's to find a skirt
that would billow in the wind. I couldn't find what I was
looking for, and had to settle for something different. Not
quite my usual style, it was leopard patterned sheer with a
small black slip. It made quite a statement. With my apologies
to the original owner, I wasn't about to wear it until the
moment I was ready to take the photograph.

Even though this was a selfie exercise, my
husband was willing to tag along so we headed to Hirtle's Beach
with the dogs, camera, tripod, and outfit. I picked a spot and
pulled my new to me skirt over my jeans and set up my camera on
the timer mode. John held the dogs and watched me as I ran back
and forth in my leopard skirt and tried to get two scarves to
flutter in the wind. A lack of wind, incorrect exposure setting,
a photo bombing dog, and the fact that I forgot to take off my
Blundstone boots, all contributed to a set of selfie images that
weren't quite the artistic vision I had in mind.

I did manage to capture something similar to
what I had in my mind's eye when we had a second excursion to
Beach Meadows a few days later. No photo bombing dogs, and a
better location suggested by my husband helped me achieve the
look I was going for.

Now, what has that all got to do with where we
started in this article? Well, on a recent snowy day with no
tasks that needed to be done, I was finding something to amuse
myself with. I was organizing all my images from last year and
came across the photos from my selfie session. Since playing
with photographs is a lot more interesting than digitally
labeling and filing them, I picked one and started editing. The
photo bombing dog got cropped. The clunky boots got cropped. I
adjusted the exposure and decided to discard the colour. And
then I played with a preset effect on some computer software.
Voila, I had an image I was happy with, creating something out
of an image I was going to discard.

The same photo with a bit of editing - I was going to discard the original photo, but I love it now!

I know not everyone is a photographer, and not everyone has the
same luxury of time. But now and then we all get bored and need to
amuse ourselves. And even a boring bit of organizing can turn into
something interesting to focus on.

2 comments:

Lovely picture Sara :-) I've taken some pictures that I hoped would come out a certain way, but were either too blurry or just didn't look good. Then I played around with them and some actually ended up looking not so bad :-)

I hear you about having to amuse yourself sometimes - if the weather is too cold or wet or windy to work on the house, we don't have a whole lot to do in our little rental! Today I'm trying out some new apple recipes. And maybe I'll write a blog post - I need to stop being so delinquent about blogging :-)